I know sorry doesn't really cut it, but I am apologetic for letting two months go by after the time I said I would update. My brain shut down after exams, and has only recently rebooted. I was persuaded to update by several wonderful reviews, but since I don't have any prewritten chapters I can't predict when I'll next update. I'm intending it to be before the beginning of September, but I am in the throes of personal statement writing, so we'll see. Having said this, I want to reassure you I have ABSOLUTELY NO INTENTION of giving up on the story; I have the next chapter planned out in my head. I hope you enjoy this one.
Courage is looking fear right in the eye and saying, "Get the hell out of my way, I've got things to do." - Anon
It hurts to love someone and not be loved in return, but what is most painful is to love someone and never find the courage to let the person know how you feel." - Anon
One of the detrimental effects of the house system, that I absolutely abhorred, was the stereotyping of pupils of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. If you were a Ravenclaw, you had to be intelligent; if you were a Hufflepuff, kind; if you were a Slytherin, sneaky, and if you were a Gryffindor, brave. The house system made you a characteristic, rather than a person.
I was a Gryffindor, therefore I was brave. Not clever, not kind, not sneaky, just brave. It made people forget that every person has multiple sides to their personality, and in the course of one day, let alone seven years, could be more than just one characteristic.
Plus the fact that the Sorting Hat had obviously got it wrong. I, Rose Loganberry, was a Gryffindor. Gryffindor equals brave. Unfortunately, I didn't seem to have got the memo. After collecting my scattered wits after Sirius' parting shot, my quivering limbs had drawn themselves up and dragged me up to the Gryffindor Seventh Year Girls' Dormitory, before they collapsed on my bed with no sign of moving. For a while.
Forget bravery. There was no way, not even with levitating charms, and summoning charms, and any other translocating magic, that I was moving from the dormitory. Come hell or high water, even freezing cold water, with bits of ice, sharks and water spiders in it, I was staying in that dormitory. That dormitory being the only place in the castle that scary things like boys couldn't accost me and ask me to answer life changing questions.
So, as I said, forget bravery. I'd quite happily sit in the Girls' Dorms until the Sorting Hat realised its mistake and moved me to Hufflepuff. Where I'd set up my new home in the Girls' Dorms there. I was a complete coward, and perfectly, nay, incandescently happy with the fact. No goading along the lines of "I thought you were supposed to be in Gryffindor" would move me from my aforementioned haven.
I spent the afternoon doing the work, first-day of term, might I had, I had already been assigned, dined on chocolate frogs, and then took a long bath. I had successfully evaded Sirius, and more importantly, Lily, for the evening.
Even as I was a coward, I was brave. Normally not one to condone skipping class: sorry for being a goody two-shoes, but I am the last person to ever get away with it – even before the bell had gone the teacher would be asking where I was and plotting to give me detention. Unlike some people, namely the Marauders, who only turn up to two out of three classes and no one bats an eyelid. Anyway, I BRAVELY risked the wrath of my teachers in favour of once more evading Sirius, and sat in the dorm reading the chapters of my textbooks we would be doing in class. I know it was sad, and pathetic, but maybe I should move to Ravenclaw instead of Hufflepuff- I'd have no trouble with the swottish attitude.
My so-called friends refused to get my any food. As Lily put it:
"I'm not enabling you in this stupidity. Sooner or later you'll have to leave here to find food."
That's what she thinks; I'm made of sterner stuff. And she'll be sorry when she finds my poor, emaciated body dead from starvation. Although I do understand where she's coming from: the only hunger strike I ever went on, when as an eight year old my mum refused to let me watch a 12 video that both my brothers were watching, lasted 1 day, as my mum caught me squirreling bread rolls up to my room two hours after the first meal I had missed. It's partly one of the reasons I could never be anorexic: one missed meal and I'd be breaking into supermarkets in search of food. Or, failing that, eating grass. If cows can do it, why not humans?
Unfortunately, there was no grass in the dormitory. By lunchtime, when I had eaten my supply of chocolate frogs, and Lily's, and had a hunt for Katie's, I had that sickly feeling that comes with eating copious amounts of chocolate as your only food source for the past three meals.
Not that I felt bad about eating my friends' chocolate – if they were going to refuse to smuggle me food from the Great Hall, and talk about not "enabling me", as if I were some kind of alcoholic or addict, might I indignantly add, then I would jolly well eat their chocolate and enjoy every last morsel of it. Whilst they stuffed their faces with square meals in the Great Hall.
That evening, when I was alternatively nursing my empty belly and congratulating myself for being a successful rebel: no teachers had stormed up and given me detention for skiving yet, something I was very surprised about, my friends came up. Katie had decided to take the law into her own hands, which entailed trying to drag me by force from my safe haven. Unfortunately, even as Alice and Megs joined in, this resulted in me letting off some accidental magic, blasting my friends away from me in to walls, and severely singeing the hangings around Lily's bed.
Ten seconds later, Lily came barging up the stairs, as did most of the population of current Gryffindor girls from all years, in expectation of seeing a bomb site, due to the loud explosion noise that had been emitted by my accidental magic. It took several minutes for Lily to dispel the cluster of girls surrounding our door, who hurried off, no doubt, to inform the whole population of the Gryffindor boys who were, from the sounds of it, clustered round the bottom of the staircase.
Lily's face was far from pleased, but upon being informed of what had occurred, she merely said, with maddening serenity, that to leave me to my own hungry devices would be of more effect than coercively dragging me from the dorm. She should be in Slytherin, that one. And there I go, stereotyping people again.
To show my indignation, I flounced from the room, nose high in the air. As I couldn't leave the dorm, I had to settle for flouncing into the bathroom, but still. It was a good flounce. I then proceeded, in order to vindicate myself, and because I get very crabby when I'm hungry, to take a two hour bath. My friends would have to go elsewhere to go to the loo. So there. That'll teach them to try to starve me from my safe haven. Don't mess with me.
I then had a shower, did all manner of beautification, such as exfoliation, waxing, shaving and plucking. I then tried to eat some of Katie's shower gel, which was lime flavour. Unfortunately, it didn't taste as good as it smelt, so I had toothpaste for dinner instead. Finally, as I felt rather choked on all the steam in the bathroom, I let myself out into the dorm, much cleaner, but no less hungry than before.
Seriously, the hunger thing was no joke. I felt a new found respect for all those starving people in the world who go on living. When I got out of the dorm, one of the first things I was going to do was give a lot of money to food aid to those who don't have enough food – it was a truly awful experience. It took me ages to get to sleep, as my stomach was trying to eat itself from the inside out, not satisfied with a tube of Aquafresh. And a smidgeon of lime-smelling, but soap tasting, shower gel.
I awoke bright and early the next morning, to the loud rumbling of my stomach. It was demanding food. After shouting at it for a few minutes, in vain might I add, I resigned myself to another day of hunger. Not even a pitiful moan, which was very stirring, in my humble opinion, persuaded Lily to obtain for me even the tiniest morsel of food.
It was around lunchtime that the thought first entered my brain, quietly at first, but then with increasing pitch throughout the afternoon.
"How pathetic is it to starve yourself for the sake of avoiding a boy? A boy who wants to go out with you, and whom you've wanted to go out with for nigh on seven years?"
At first, I ignored it, but as the afternoon wore on and the January sun sank beyond the horizon, the voice continued to pervade my brain, taking over the frightened voice which told me to avoid Sirius Black (gulp) at all costs, and even, at some moments, drowning out the pounding going on in my belly.
Darkness fell. The voice, which I shall call my inner Gryffindor, increased in volume, as dark clouds amass in volume on the horizon before a thunder-storm.
Perhaps the Sorting Hat had been right to place me in Gryffindor, for as the stars came out, a resolution began to take shape in my sugar-starved limbs.
"Stand up. Walk out of your safe haven. Walk down the stairs. Find Sirius Black. Give him your answer. In short, jump of that cliff, and hope, against all hope, against reason and all the worries of your vulnerable little heart, that he jumps with you. And after that – you live."
Maybe it was low blood sugar levels, and lack of food. Maybe it was claustrophobia and lack of fresh air. But, slowly, my body raised itself off of the bed, and walked to the door. Only a tiny part of my brain was screaming, telling me to stay safe. The rest was filled with a determination, a determination that led me out of the door, and slowly, ever so slowly, down the stairs to either my coronation or execution.
As fate, luck, destiny or whatever would have it, the common room was virtually empty, save for three first years playing gobstones near the portrait hole, and two fourth year boys sitting on the stairs leading up to the boy's dormitory's, deep in serious conversation.
My eyes were drawn to the couches by the fire, where a dark silhouette sat staring into the carmine embers of the flames. A brooding silhouette, looking for all the world like some mysterious and melancholy Byronic hero. Sirius Black.
See you soon, love EllieBaby xxx